Among printers and other image forming apparatuses connected to a network, an image forming apparatus, which, upon receiving a request from an information processing terminal connected to the network, replies with status information indicating a state of the image forming apparatus, has been known widely from before.
Such an image forming apparatus connected to a network is arranged so that a specific personal computer or other information processing terminal that manages the image forming apparatus is registered in the image forming apparatus in advance, and when accessed by an information processing terminal connected to the network, the image forming apparatus provides to this information processing terminal a response indicating by which information processing terminal the image forming apparatus is being managed (see, for example, JP-A-11-296467).
Among image forming apparatuses that are being used popularly in recent years is an image forming apparatus equipped with a plurality of communication ports (for example, parallel ports, USB ports, etc.,) that enable local connection of information processing terminals.
With the image forming apparatus, different information processing terminals may be connected respectively to the plurality of communication ports, and these information processing terminals may be used in a state of being communicably connected to a management device connected to the same network. In such a case, the management device is arranged to request the information processing terminals for status information that expresses a state of the image forming apparatus, and manages an operation state of the image forming apparatus by acquiring the status information via the information processing terminals.
When in such a state in which different information processing terminals are connected respectively to the plurality of communication ports of the image forming apparatus, the management device requests the status information from the information processing terminals, the plurality of information processing terminals connected to the single image forming apparatus send status information on the same image forming apparatus to the management device. There was thus an issue that excess, redundant data are accumulated in the management device and status information therefore could not be managed appropriately.
In order to prevent the above, a management information processing terminal may be set in advance and the image forming apparatus may be arranged to send the status information just to this management information processing terminal as set forth in JP-A-11-296467. However, with this arrangement, when the management information processing terminal is not started up, the management device cannot acquire status information on the image forming apparatus even when the image forming apparatus is being used.